


A Little Fall of Rain

by aproposity



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, implied death of a child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-01
Updated: 2013-07-01
Packaged: 2017-12-16 19:03:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/865496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aproposity/pseuds/aproposity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim Moriarty is not one that easily trusts his employees, and his tests of loyalty are more rigorous for Sebastian Moran than most. A fic request asking for Moran, Moriarty, and rain. Apologies for the shameless play on words from the <i>Les Miserables</i> song of the same name that resulted in the title.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Little Fall of Rain

“Fuck's sake!” Sebastian snarled as the cigarette between his lips briefly caught in the flame of his lighter, sparked a warming glow before dying with a soft hiss as another rush of wind sent the rain thundering across the rooftops into the overhanging canopy he was using as his station.

Jim had scoffed at him, sneered briefly about him getting soft, that once upon a time he'd fought tigers and men alike in a shit-caked gutter yet now could barely stomach a little rain. Well, Jim could fuck off. Sebastian tossed the cigarette violently into the night, paper soaked through and tobacco spilling, and settled back against concrete that scratched at the backs of his elbows and left his overcoat damp with cold. He glanced at his watch. 10:26pm. Four minutes. Jim was cutting it close this time. Of course, the man in question would protest to that, but Sebastian had spent years crouched behind crumbling, mortar-eaten walls and between the rotting branches of gas-stained trees from dawn until dusk. Of course, in London there were no trees or tanks or bombs, but it was a battlefield just the same, and Jim consistently called on him to do what he'd spent a lifetime doing in a fraction of the time he'd done it. Each hit, the gap grew smaller, and with it each hit became just that for Sebastian, and he would regularly settle back from his rifle after a half-minute hunt with a flush of adrenaline-ridden satisfaction.

Speak of the devil. A tellingly sing-song voice crackled along the radio, his syllables trembling in the thin line of one-way communication that barely held in the weather. “Temper, temper.”

He didn't take the bait. The lack of earpiece or microphone certainly didn't make it difficult for him to do so. Sebastian wasn't naive enough to think Jim's eyes and ears _weren't_ all over him without his knowledge. The man was a spider; he got into the cracks and crevices, spinning his webs deep within the skeletal structure of London and for this reason Sebastian took it as read that the man could watch him shit, shower and shave if he so wished and get away with it.

Christ, he hoped Jim never wished.

“Who am I offing tonight then?” he asked instead, grappling at his belt for the set of binoculars he'd brought with him just in case. Jim had a habit of playing games at the most inopportune times. There had been one instance where Sebastian wasn't so prepared, and Jim had offered him nothing much by way of an identification marker for his target other than an obscure reference to a signet ring, and Sebastian had been forced to scramble through a forty-second opener trying to pick out the bearer of said ring in the midst of a rabble of obscenely rich businessmen milling past the only accessible window. He'd got the bloke, of course he had, but lesson learned. Jim Moriarty did not hold anyone's hand, and if you expected him to you were setting yourself up for a fall – or a disembowelment. Whatever the mad bastard took a fancy to at the time. And judging by the prickle of silence that hissed at him through his coat pocket this time was no different.

This time, he turned his attention to a similar window, only thing one was much smaller and merely double-glazed. Residential, he noted off-handedly. It emitted a soft golden glow that spilled out across a balcony littered with potted plants and mourning flowers and beyond that...

The cheap plastic bit into his fingers as he breathed out a soft _'oh'_.

Past the minor obscurity of silk netting sewn into a variety of small animals, there lay no businessmen, no politicians, no public figure of any kind. What lay past that curtain was a little girl, tucked under a blushing pink duvet dotted with flowers and sequins, surrounded by an array of dolls, a picture book propped on her knee while a woman – presumably her mother – gestured with long, polished fingers at the pages and talked animatedly.

Sebastian took all this in, analyzed and catalogued it as he would an approaching enemy soldier, and asked, “The woman?”

Of course not. That would be too easy. That wouldn't be playing the game Jim Moriarty had turned into a fucking art-form.

“Don't be boring,” Jim drawled, the syllables curling themselves around the shell of his ear, and Sebastian knew that the owner of that voice was not telepathic no matter how much he pretended to be but he could swear that he was laughing at him. Sebastian did not blink. He did not swallow. His heart did not race, his palms did not sweat, he neither showed nor felt anything in response to this. Instead, he hooked the binoculars back into his belt and stepped out into the downpour.

The tripod had long been set up, obscured behind a convenient chimney stack, and the muzzle of the rifle stretched proudly across the brickwork, extended out towards the window across the empty air of the street. Sebastian took his natural place at the helm, steadfastly ignoring the trickle of water sliding past his collar. Through the scope, the girl looked so much like her mother, twin heads of blonde hair tumbling down over rounded shoulders as they each bent over the book. Even with the binoculars, it was impossible to tell what they were reading, but whatever it was left her dimple-cheeked as her mother gesticulated wildly along. Every so often a fresh burst of rain collided against the glass separating them from the night's terrors – from the wet and the cold and Jim Moriarty and the modest little 'O' of a sniper's muzzle – and turned them into the drowned remnants of a watercolour painting, blobs of soft pinks and whites and yellows seeping out into an indistinct mess.

A cursory glance at his watch, the face gleaming in the downpour. 10:29pm. Eighteen seconds. The mother threw her head back and the girl broke out into startled laughter, the blood rushing to her face.

She was cute. She was meat.

Eighteen seconds later, Sebastian calmly retreated behind the stack, packed away the rifle and tripod into a discreet instrument case, slung it over his shoulder and made for the flight of stairs into the bar. The echo of Jim’s cooing elation bred and multiplied in the darkness, coming at Sebastian from all sides, and the rush of adrenaline that set his heart racing and kissed at his fingertips _roared_.

**Author's Note:**

> Please be sure to check out my [Tumblr](http://gildedwithgrace.tumblr.com/) if you enjoyed this fic. Thank you for reading!


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